The field of the invention relates to user interfaces and specifically to systems and methods for arranging data sets for analysis. Many applications operate on data tables and display data that can be sorted and/or filtered. Additionally, these data sets are often large and cannot be displayed in their entirety on a single display screen. To accommodate this, many applications includes commands and user interface elements to control the data sorting or ordering and also scrolling the visible portion of the data set to reveal portions of the data set that were previously off-screen.
When a user changes the sorting criteria, many prior applications immediately change the displayed portion of the data set to reflect the new ordering of data. However, because this change is virtually instantaneous (from the user's perspective), it may be difficult for the user to understand the relationship between the displayed data prior to sorting with that displayed after changing the sorting criteria. This problem is exacerbated when displaying large data sets. In these situations, much of the data set is off-screen and not visible to the user. Thus, changing the sorting criteria may result in substantial amounts of data that was previously off-screen becoming instantaneously visible, without any context or other indication of its relationship to the displayed data prior to the change.